2025 Membership Count and Verification Guide

https://wiki.democratsabroad.org/MembCountGuide

1.  Membership Count & Verification Overview

The official membership count is taken each January 31st. To be included in the membership count, member records must meet the following:

• Be already approved as a member

• Have a full local street address and/or phone number

• Be verified as a valid member within the past 4 years. In other words for our upcoming count valid members must have an ‘Expiry date’ after Jan. 31, 2025

Your country committee's role is to verify as many "expired" member records as possible. 

When a member joins and is approved and verified, an expiry date (as valid member) is set for 4 years later. So, unless updated or re-verified, the membership of Person X who joined on November 2, 2020 will expire November 3, 2024. Note: An expired membership date does NOT mean that a member's record disappears or is to be deleted from the database! The member exists in all senses of the term, EXCEPT that:

1. They are no longer included in the official membership count
2. They are included in the percentage of members "excluded from the membership count".

Each country committee is asked to review your membership list each year and try, as far as possible, to confirm that each of your members is still present in your country.

Why is it important? Your verified membership count (as of January 31 of each year) is used in odd-number years to calculate your country committee's voting weight. More importantly, having a clean and up-to-date database is the key to making sure your members receive all the right information, so they can vote.  Phone calls, targeted emails, and event information can reach your members when we have accurate records. It also motivates your country volunteers when they know their messages are reaching the right people.

2.  Membership List Excel Extracts

IT will produce extracts several times during the Membership Verification process. If you want to request the database extract for your country or you would like an extract at another time, send an email request to membership@democratsabroad.org

3.  NationBuilder Saved Filters

Identifying expiring memberships expiring before February 1, 2025

Several Saved Filters have been created to help you find the people whose last verified date (LVD) is expiring. The members on these lists should be your first priority to email or call.

• 2025 Expired - all the people with memberships expiring before 2025-02-01
• 2025 Expired Emailable – people who can be emailed
• 2025 Expired NotEmailableCallable – not emailable, for any reason, but can be called
• 2025 Expired BadEmailCallable – email is bad, but they can be called
• 2025 Expired Opt-OutCallable – person has opted out of email, but can be called
• 2025 Expired NotEmailableNotCallable - not emailable (any reason) with no phone number or marked as do not call
• NoAddressNoPhone - people who will be excluded from the membership count because they have no local contact information

4. Member Communications

Global-level Communication: At the global level, the IT Team will send out verification messages to everyone whose membership has expired. Members are invited to fill out a form to update their data or confirm their information is correct. If they respond, their last verified date will be updated by the IT Team and an expiry date will be set to expire in 4 years. 

Country-level Communication: Countries that plan to send their own verification messages can find information on the setup in the Guide on Auto-tags and Google Forms. Countries sending messages with an auto-tag should use this tag: 2025selfverifyCC - which Global IT will use to batch update of the LVD. If you have no idea what we're talking about here or you would like more information, contact us.

5.  Additional Information and How-to Guides